Different History
by donquichotte
Summary: An alternate possibility for "Parting of the ways". More or less Doctor/Rose
1. Chapter 1

Doctor Who does not belong to me.

I got the basis of this from another fanfic. I don't remember the name or the author, but if you recognise this, no plagiarism was intended.

oO*Oo

_When I was eight, I looked into the untempered schism._

_It's something that all Time Lord children do as a test of sorts. Some are inspired, some run away and some go mad._

_I understood. For one sparkling moment of clarity, I saw and knew all of time. I saw to the heart of the schism and took it within me. That much I remember, though I no longer know what I saw. All I can recall is a golden light and a singing fit to break the hearts._

oO*Oo

"There's gotta be some way to connect to it." Rose stalked impatiently around the console of the TARDIS. "When we were with Margaret the Slitheen, this panel here opened up and the Doctor said it was the..." Her brow furrowed in thought. "the heart of the TARDIS. We need to open this!"

Looking Rose over, Mickey saw her determination. He sighed. "I'll go get my car. _Don't_ go anywhere."

Left alone in the TARDIS, Rose ran her eyes over the familiar yet always strange equipment that occupied just about every corner of the room. Her eyes lit on something she couldn't remember ever seeing before: a sort of helmet. Maybe that was how to connect to the ship! Made sense, sort of: head gear to make a mental connection. The Doctor was special, after all, so maybe he didn't need it, but if she could just...

Rose grabbed a pole that was leaning against the wall and stood on tiptoe to reach the odd helmet. Hooking the pole around the headgear, she drew it down into her arms. She examined it, noting what looked like a pocket watch attached to the front, and then fit it carefully over her head and pushed the obvious button, hoping that her guess was correct. Immediately, she was wracked with incredible pain. Screaming, she writhed all the while telling herself, _It's for the Doctor. For the Doctor._

oO*Oo

_The High Council of Gallifrey did not like my reaction to the schism. It was unprecedented and therefore suspicious._

_I've seen records from that day and I understand their curiosity; for a few minutes, I was bathed in a golden light and I smiled as tears ran down my face. Then the light dispersed into the air and I collapsed. _

_I woke up in the sterile white rooms of a Gallifreyan live study laboratory._

oO*Oo

The Doctor whirled as the room filled with the familiar sound of the TARDIS. It was impossible that Rose could have returned, and yet, somehow...

The doors flew open, revealing Rose, but not Rose. The woman in the doorway was identical in every way to his lovely human companion, but aside from the fact that Rose _couldn't _be here, this strange Rose held herself with more confidence, more dignity and he almost thought he could sense the faintest whisper of her mind...

"Doctor! You get yourself in here now! Forget the Daleks; I'm going to kill you myself!" Rose, her voice oddly lacking the distinct South London accent, sounded utterly furious.

Weighing his options, he decided that whatever had happened to Rose was probably less dangerous than staying with the Daleks and he ran towards his blue spaceship and the angry blonde it contained. He could contemplate impossibilities later.

"_EXTERMINATE!"_

He didn't turn fast enough to avoid the shot completely and he felt the energy bolt hit him in the leg. He fell, body shuddering with the aftershocks, with Rose's voice in his ears.

"Doctor! No!"

oO*Oo

_The Time Lord scientists studied me extensively and discovered very little, at first._

_I was dissected, mentally examined and evaluated. The only anomaly they found was a trace of Huon particles. Supposedly deadly, the particles lived in me with no discernable ill-effect and that piqued the curiosity of the scientists. _

_Then they found the true anomaly. If they made me suffer enough, they could summon that strange golden light into being around me. I always woke up alone._

_I learned that when I was filled with gold and music, my body acted as a vessel for some foreign consciousness: a consciousness that could see and affect timelines as even the most powerful Time Lords could not. _

_Deciding to provoke these episodes, my keepers subjected me to trials and tests that amounted to torture, both physical and mental. As the episodes grew more frequent, I began to remember some of what I saw: present, past, future, could-have-been and may-come-to-be. All ran together._

_I don't know how long I spent trapped in those white rooms, how many centuries I spent wandering through the time-locked hallways, but those years took their toll. Those lonely years stole my sanity piece by piece and left me clinging to a single grain of reason. _

_And then I met the most extraordinary man._


	2. Chapter 2

The only thing worse than getting hit in the chest by a Dalek, thought the Doctor through his pain, was getting hit somewhere else by a Dalek. The pain longer, the energy ricocheting through the body until it stopped the heart, or in his case, hearts. And for a Time Lord, that could take a while.

If he had had a plan, the extra minutes could have allowed him to complete it, to carry it off and save the day. Unfortunately, his only plan involved too many deaths to even contemplate, so really the extra time meant only that he could say one last goodbye.

He turned to Rose, ready to tell her, tell her... But instead of seeing a blonde little human, brave in the face of death but frightened nonetheless, he saw another impossible thing. Rose was...golden; she was glowing gold, the light pouring off her in waves of shining particles.

oO*Oo

_I was not surprised when I saw the blue box appear in the white hallway, for I had seen four thousand and twenty-two timelines containing that possibility and besides, my fragile mind often conjured up stranger things._

_However, I don't know if anyone is unsurprised by the Doctor. I will admit that he surprised _me_ when he stepped out of the blue box, looked around and grumbled loudly. He had so many timelines spun about him, all leading to difficult choices and heartbreak and terrible beauty._

oO*Oo

Rose, more than just Rose, spoke in a voice that carried with it echoes of the universe.

"We are the Bad Wolf and I scatter the words. I am Time and Creation. I bring life." She waved an arm and suddenly the Doctor's senses blared a warning: something on the Gamestation was now horribly, horribly wrong. He shuddered again: on top of the pain from the Dalek shot, he felt nauseous, too. Fantastic.

oO*Oo

_The first Doctor I knew was an older gentleman, dressed in black with a walking stick. He looked nothing like the ornately dressed Gallifreyan officials nor like the precise and spare scientists that I had seen. I might have trusted him only on that._

"_Wretched ship! Where have you brought me now?" _

oO*Oo

Jack woke, gasping, in the dark, certain he was dead.

He looked around in surprise: no after life he had ever heard of resembled the Gamestation. He felt awfully sore, tired and hungry to be dead, but hadn't he just faced down Daleks with a hand gun? That didn't generally allow for any sort of future.

He shook his head. Questions could wait until later; Rose and the Doctor would be upstairs. He began working the lift controls.

oO*Oo

_The strange man saw me and his eyes narrowed. "A prisoner? Hmmm. No, I think not. An experiment, so to speak. Well, you've obviously got some power and my, my you've been damaged. I can't leave you here. Come along, my dear."_

_He brought me into his box, his TARDIS, and he put me to sleep so I could heal and forget. _

_I dreamed of the future._

oO*Oo

Rose wasn't finished. "Daleks! I see every atom of your existence, and I divide them. And unto dust you shall return."

The Doctor looked up to see the Daleks dissolving into dust all around him. He was weakening; his hearts beginning to beat erratically.

"The Time War ends!" shouted the golden goddess.

Then, Rose staggered suddenly. "The body," she shrieked "the body dies! No! No more death." The golden glow began to evaporate into the air. "Be safe, my Doctor."

As the Doctor's vision darkened and blurred, he saw Rose fall to the ground. His eyes closed just as he felt the regeneration energy fill him.

oO*Oo

_The next time I saw the Doctor, he was a different man; leather jacket, big ears, a daft grin, and the weight of centuries in his eyes. _

_I woke, weak and confused, on a little planet called Earth, galaxies away from Gallifrey. The moment I opened my eyes, I was embraced by leather and muscle and the smell of time and rain and lightning. _

"_We're the last, Rose. The very last. The rest are all gone. I killed them. Oh, Rose, you should run from me."_

_I understood what he didn't say, his unspoken plea for companionship, and I couldn't refuse the man with starlight and mysteries in his eyes._


	3. Chapter 3

Rose woke on the Gamestation to find the Doctor glowing with energy. As she watched, his body transformed. When the light faded, a new man lay in his place, all slim lines and spiky hair.

Suddenly she doubled over in shock; something strange, something _wrong, _was approaching and the Doctor was...temporarily incapacitated.

Sobbing for the man she had known and for poor Captain Jack and all the other lost souls, Rose strained to drag the unconscious, unfamiliar Doctor into the TARDIS and set the controls for the one safe haven she knew she could find.

oO*Oo

_I learned to know this Doctor, as I had not done his predecessor, any of them. He was vulnerable and wounded, a reluctant soldier forced to make the ultimate choice. But he was strong, so strong, his mind putting the past aside and carrying on, marching bravely through the trials of life._

_And, though our planet and our people were gone, we were not alone._

oO*Oo

Jack arrived on floor 500 just as the TARDIS finished dematerialising. He watched the box disappear with a sick feeling in his stomach that was a little like betrayal, a little like anger, but mostly like sadness.

They hadn't looked for him.

He lifted his Vortex Manipulator to eye level. He knew where to go to eventually find the pair. Setting the coordinates for London, Earth, 2006, Jack prepared for the old uncomfortable feeling of traveling the Vortex. He watched the Gamestation fade from view while imaging the looks on the Doctor's and Rose's faces.

He woke up in 18th century America, alone, penniless and sick at heart.

Then he realised that he couldn't die.

oO*Oo

_We traveled and discovered and fought. But most importantly, we loved._

_I found a family: the Doctor first, always first, and Jackie Tyler who practically adopted me as her own. Mickey Smith, a big-hearted, loyal and fumbling mechanic. And Captain Jack, the wonderful, flirtatious captain who made me laugh._

_I had not known joy for so long._

oO*Oo

The TARDIS materialised on the Powell Estate, summoning Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith with the sound of the universe.

They found a strange Rose, babbling about Daleks and gold lights and a man who was and was not the Doctor. Rose was Rose and they loved her, so they brought the man inside and put him to bed and made no comment when Rose lay down next to him and slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted.

Watching over her daughter and the mysterious man beside her, Jackie Tyler contemplated love and insanity and aliens.

The Doctor woke first, and mumbled about free radicals and the Bad Wolf. He happily gulped down the tea Jackie brought and promptly fell back to sleep, curled protectively around Rose. Jackie sighed. He had to be the Doctor, no one else would talk so much about nothing at all and then refuse to explain.


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor woke, warm and comfortable, in a human bed, in human pyjamas wrapped around a human girl. Except wait, no... no no no no. She couldn't have! The Doctor sat bolt upright and looked into the face of his sleeping companion. Hardly knowing what to hope, he grabbed the stethoscope on the bedside table (and what was a stethoscope doing there, anyways? Jackie Tyler as a doctor was terrifying. And, come to think of it, how had he gotten into these pyjamas? They wouldn't do at all; he was thinking something a bit more refined this incarnation...) and listened to Rose's heart... and heard an echo. Moving the stethoscope to the other side of her chest, he held his breath and heard a second heart.

_Oh Rose._

For a moment, he was breathless at the thought of another Time Lord, a companion who wouldn't fade away with time. And that it was Rose, beautiful, brilliant Rose... Except it wasn't Rose, not really. The girl sleeping beside him was a fairytale, a pipedream and he wanted _his_ Rose, his human Rose, back.

Shaking off the tempting futures his mind provided, the Doctor leapt to his feet and ran to the TARDIS, ignoring Jackie's indignant shouts. If Rose had done what he suspected she'd done... He flung open the door to see the tell-tale helmet hanging from the ceiling.

"What did you do?" He asked the TARDIS sternly. The ship responded in his mind, sounding like a small child bringing home a stray: a little sheepish, but _oh please, oh please can we keep her?_ He sighed. An intelligent ship was all well and good in some situations, but this was taking it a little too far.

"You know we can't. It's not fair to Rose, or to her family. I know you miss them, me too, but we _can't._" He tried unsuccessfully to pry the watch out of the helmet. "Give me the watch. Please."

It came loose in his hand, accompanied by what he could only interpret as a telepathic pout.

"Thank you."

oO*Oo

He ran back to the Tyler flat, only to be stopped by an irate Jackie.

_Slap!_

"What the hell did you do to my daughter, you bloody great alien? I listened to her heartbeat, you know! She has two hearts; I heard 'em, loud and clear. And then what was I supposed to do? Couldn't take her to the hospital, could I? If you don't fix this, I'm gonna kill you."

Straightening, still clutching the side of his face, the Doctor held up the silver watch.

"Your daughter is in here; it's a long story, but essentially she became a Time Lady so she could come back, well forward, and save me, save the planet, actually. Still don't know exactly how she did that last bit really... I was dying at the time, so it's a bit fuzzy."

Jackie stared. "My daughter's in a pocket watch? And there's an alien in her body?"

"More or less. It's more complicated than that, but –"

_Slap!_

"Fix her. Now."

oO*Oo

"But I _remember_ it. Gallifrey, and the schism and the laboratory. And you." Rose stared, wide-eyed at her new Doctor. "I... imagined it all?"

The Doctor sighed. "Not exactly. The TARDIS used what she knows to build you a Time Lord identity. Um... she rather, er, hoped that you would remain changed for a bit longer. Well, much longer. Well, forever, really. Anyways, in that hope, she built you a very detailed, very sustainable back story. She also gave you some of her essence, somehow. She actually managed to transfer, via the _chameleon circuit_ might I add, a small part of the Time Vortex into you. Come to think of it, you should be dead – no mortal body is meant to take that on."

He stared searchingly into her face for a moment before his face took on a solemn cast.

" And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, but you're not _real_, and there's a human girl, a real human girl, trapped in this watch, who doesn't know what's happened to her. You have to open the watch and let her out."

When Rose spoke, after a long moment of silence, her voice was high, like human Rose's was when she was trying not to cry.

"But I... I love you."

The Doctor's breath caught abruptly. It would be so easy, even now, to let her stay like this. But he couldn't do that to human Rose, nor even to Jackie and Mickey.

"I _can't_ love you, I'm sorry, but I can't. If things were different, maybe I could have – but you are a fantasy, a tempting illusion, nothing more.

"This is all I can give you."

Cradling her head in his hands, the Doctor leaned forward to press a kiss to her lips. He let her sustain the contact until she pulled away to smile weakly at him.

She kept her eyes locked on his as her fingers slid over the silver watch's engraved surface, found the crack, and flipped the two halves apart.

oO*Oo

Rose, proper Rose, was back.

And then the Sycorax invaded.

oO*Oo

The Sycorax dealt with, (dealt with a little too well, actually, courtesy of Harriet Jones) the Doctor and Rose found themselves back in the TARDIS, sharing an awkward silence while the Doctor set new coordinates.

"So...how are you feeling?" Well, it seemed that this incarnation _really_ couldn't stand silence.

"Strange. 'S like, I dunno, I _was_ her, and I remember being her, but at the same time, she's this whole other person. Like, maybe, maybe how you feel when you regenerate?" Rose was silent a moment. "She did love you, Doctor."

He realised what Rose really meant (_I love you_) and recognised the opening she had created. Somewhere in his mind, he acknowledged that, no matter what kind of man he was, or had been or would be, he would love Rose Tyler. Fact. Still, she would leave him: by choice or by circumstance or by time and he would barely survive it as it was. He couldn't risk getting closer.

Disregarding, as he had so often done before, the opportunity to speak his mind on that particular topic, (actually, given the gob this version seemed to possess, he ought to take care not to blurt out his feelings in the middle of some technical explanation), the Doctor smiled.

"Quite right, too. Allons-y?"

Rose, sighed a little in defeat, but grinned her signature grin and nodded.

"Allons-y," she agreed.

He might not know exactly what the future held, but with this wonderful human by his side, he knew one thing.

It would be fantastic.

oO*Oo

I suppose that series 2 follows this without much AU, though Rose would still have at least some overly advanced knowledge. I was sort of trying to make this idea plausible while still setting up all the important plot developments. And adding in some gratuitous Doctor/Rose ship.


End file.
